Why Teach Literature: #2 Humanity

When I was teaching, and I had extra time on my hands, I would reflect on the work--the whys and hows and whats. So in solidarity with my former colleagues, I'm going to write a series about every English teacher's favorite thing-- teaching literature, and why we do it. There will be some number of posts (I don't have a plan here).

Also, it would be nice to write and read about something positive, and I don't know anything much more positive than what teachers do and why they do it.

Young humans routinely work on the oldest questions.How can I fully be my best realm self? How does the world work, and how is one supposed to be in it?

These questions appear in a million different guises, many of them not obviously deep or profound. What should I wear today? Who will I sit with at lunch? Is it okay if laugh at that? Is it not normal that I'm not interested in that? If people know this about me, will they hate me? Am I ever going to find someone with whom I can share a special connection? Am I weird?

Reading provides students with an opportunity to see beyond their immediate surroundings, where everything they know about the world, about being human, even about themselves, is taught to them by a small group of peers and a limited number of adults. Reading shows therm other people, other cultures, other worlds, other ways of being. Reading shows what it has meant to be human in other times and places.

Reading illuminates the debates about all these issues. Authors make their case for a world of mutual support or dog eat dog competition. Authors argue for the importance of just one person or the value of the collective. Authors try to capture what it means to be a friend or parent, what it means to love somebody. And one of the beauties is that there are a wide range of arguments being made. My beat was mostly US literature, and we cycled through the many different views of the world, from Puritans through Romantics and Realists and Modernists, and as the year progressed, we could talk about each while comparing and contrasting what they believed was true and right (and if they even believed in "true" and "right"). This allows a richness in discussion that was fed directly by whatever concerns the students brought into my classroom.

It should be said, too, that to teach this stuff, you have to do the work. As you slide into each work, you have to really get what that author sees about the world, why they see what they see. Somehow you have to slide from one worldview into another so that you can teach one clearly. Multiple times a year, my students would hear this from me: "I'm not here to tell you these folks were right or that they were wrong, but I want you to see clearly how they saw their world. Whether you accept it or reject it for your own life is your own choice."

Doing the work also means examining your own biases and beliefs, your own ideas about how the world works and how to be human in it. If you are cruising on autopilot, you can't do this aspect of literature justice. Thoreau says to live deliberately, and that applies here, even if you think he was generally full of it. This means that sometimes whatever particular issue you're wrestling with may leak into your classroom. That's okay. And you can be honest about it (without letting the leak become a swamp that sweeps your whole class away). It's part of the modeling, the teaching.

Teachers of literature are often drawn to the language, the words, the structure of how they're put together, which words are chosen. Spotting meter and rhythm, moving phraseology, figures of speech, all that fun stuff. And it has value. But the teacher c an't drift over the line to where you're teaching your students that the literature is just a particular bunch of words on the page. The words mean something, tell us something.

And students will regularly raise the question, as you probe and analyze, "What makes you think the author was trying to say anything except what the words literally say?" The fair answer is that we don't, and that the author may have just been trying to tell a story the best way he knew how. That doesn't matter. Intentionally or not,  the author embedded beliefs about humanity and the world in the work, because no writer sits down and says, "I'm going to deliberately write about people who don't act like people set in a world that doesn't work like the world." Even writers of bad trash, who do both of those things, don't think that's what they're doing.

The beauty--well, one beauty-- of literature is that it can make a rich spectrum of human experience available and accessible to anybody who can get their hands on the printed (or screen-projected) word. We are the only animal that can learn from other peoples' experiences, or from imaginary experiences. We get to be on the receiving end of authors who are trying to somehow capture something true about existence in a string of words. Which is, in itself, something to grasp about being fully human in the world.

The high-stakes testing regime stands against all of this, with their assumption that there is only one right way to read any work of literature, coupled with their belief that one can clip out a few paragraphs and absorb them quickly, while the clock ticks, and select that one true view. It's a narrow, cheap view of literature and, by extension, of the humanity it contains.

Literature's humanity is also short- changed by the reading skills crowd that sees reading as just a bucket in which to carry context-free skills like making inferences or using context clues, as if these skills can exist divorced from any content or understanding. The suggestion is that the important part of being a human in the world is not to know things, but to do things, specifically things that someone else values enough to pay you for the doing. This is not a very rich view of humanity, either.

So teach literature so that students can see the full breadth and depth of the answers about the world and being human in it, and in the seeing, get a better sense of what their best selves look like.

Protecting Students In The Screen Age: An Action Tool For Parents And Teachers

It has been just a month since this piece ran at Forbes.com, but what a month. In some ways, the protections for students regarding screens are even more important.

It has been a decade since I was introduced to the idea of a 1:1 classroom—a school in which every single student carried a computing device—and I never regretted it for a moment. Having those tools always at my students’ fingertips was extraordinarily useful for my classroom practice, and I would never have willingly given it up.

But.

The constant presence of computers in classrooms has created education, security and privacy issues far faster than many schools or parents can cope, and trying to teach students about “digital citizenship” felt at times like trying to empty Lake Erie with a paper cup.

If data is the new oil, then schools are an untapped ocean-sized reservoir. And students, parents, and schools have been slow to guard that ocean—far slower than the companies want to tap it.

Do you think this would work better if we turned the screen on?

Google has perhaps led the pack in offering both hardware and software that was appealing inexpensive and functional. Now the state of New Mexico is suing Google for using those tools to hoover up student data without parental consent. Parents are increasingly concerned about the technology in school, while at the same time, ed tech is pushing its way into more and more of education world, from personalized learning which most often means a student in front of a screen, all the way down to computerized pre-school.

In response to this issue, the Children’s Screen Time Action Network has released a “Screens in Schools Action Kit.”

The kit provides parents and teachers both with information and explanations that help lay out the issues, as well as providing the language with which to discuss these issues (for folks whose position is “This stuff bothers me, but I’m not even sure want exactly to say about it”). It’s not arguing for the eradication of tech, but a balanced, measured approach:

With little proven benefit and potentially great harm, it is prudent to limit the use of digital devices in schools until such time as these devices can be shown to be safe for children and good for their learning.

The kit comes in four sections.

The Problem lays out the issues, including the relevant research about screen time’s effects on learning, health and social-emotional well-being. It also looks at the problems of privacy and data misuse.

Tools For Parents includes guides to important questions that parents can ask and fact sheets about ed tech. It also offers an assortment of templates for everything from petitions to letters to the superintendent to sample policy recommendations.

Tools For Educators offers more research and data about screens, some policy recommendations, as well as some of the arguments about ed tech written by leaders and commenters on the field.

And finally, a Further Reading section provides an extensive list of resources for more study on the issues involved.

The issues surrounding computer technology in the classroom in the classroom are not simple; the solution is neither to remove them entirely or to give them unrestricted free rein. But so far, the bulk of the power in the discussion has rested with those who stand to most benefit from technology use in school. This kit helps provide parents and educators with the tools they can use to work for a better balance.

The materials in the kit are printable, though, ironically, you’ll need to give an email address to get access to the full free kit.

Originally posted at Forbes.com.

Why Teach Literature Stuff: #1 What Is It?

When I was teaching, and I had extra time on my hands, I would reflect on the work--the whys and hows and whats. So in solidarity with my former colleagues, I'm going to write a series about every English teacher's favorite thing-- teaching literature, and why we do it. There will be some number of posts (I don't have a plan here).

Also, it would be nice to write and read about something positive, and I don't know anything much more positive than what teachers do and why they do it. 

So what are we even talking about? The word "literature" suggests some special quality that is elevated beyond just reading stuff like a cereal box or a blog post. Everybody has an opinion about what qualifies and what does not, and some people feel pretty damn strongly about those opinions.

The frame I used is a modified version of what I learned from my own high school English teacher, and I find it useful for sorting things out. Our four categories are:

Classics:

Classics have been tested by time. That requires a couple of generations. It's easier, perhaps, to see the process with music. Particular music has its big popularity when it's new, then a nostalgia bump when the people who grew up with it inflict it on their own children. Eventually, if people still listen to it, it's because they find something there that speaks to them. Initial popularity is not always a good measure; "In The Mood" was not a huge hit when it was new, nor was "Bohemian Rhapsody." Now they're iconic.

So there has to be time, and then there has to be something universal in the work that still speaks to people after decades have passed. Romeo and Juliet still makers sense to folks, to the point that it can be refilmed or restaged every decade or so and be successful. (Note: not true of all Shakespeare).

Note that when I say a work speaks to us today, there are three elements in that formulation-- the work, us, and today. The Canon, or any ideas about the Canon, can't be set in stone. Who we are and what is going on in our world changes what messages matter or can cut through. Almost everything in the Canon, regardless of whose canon you're talking about, has been ion and out of favor over the years. That's okay; the very act of re-evaluating the Canon is part of the value in teaching literature-- "What is this work saying, what is it saying to us, and how is it saying it" are fundamental questions that make us better by being wrestled with.

In fact, whether a work is classic or not can depend on presentation and framing. I was required for years to teach Julius Caesar, and could not sell it to save my life (10th graders are not, it turns out, electrified by political intrigue). But when I started framing it as a play about trying to read the signs-- can you tell when something bad is about to happen, and having read them, avoid it--it clicked. Likewise, Hamlet doesn't fly as a play about palace intrigue, but if you ask adolescents "What would you do if your life sucked so much you couldn't stand it and you had nowhere to turn to deal with it," they get it. It's all about the big questions-- how does the world work, and what does it mean to be a human in it?

Great Works:

There are works of art that are important, even if nobody really relates to them. Ulysses is important and influential, but you didn't really read it. Moby Dick is iconic, but Oh My God in heaven, what a slog to get through. Like a movie that's important in film history, but impossible to sit through, some works hold an important spot in the history of literature or of a culture, but modern readers are unlikely to forge a relationship with them. These are often the works that hardcore fans read--but nobody else (like, say, Shakespeare's histories).

You'll know you're teaching one of these if you spend a lot of time trying to explain to your students why anybody should care about the work at all, rather than showing them the connections to the world they live in. Important works don't have to pass a test of time, either. They can be important right now.

Good Trash:

Throughout history, few writers have sat down thinking, "I will create a universal classic that will live through the ages." (Walt Whitman counts as an exception.) Mostly, writers sit down and say things like "I am hungry and would like money to buy food" or "I have some cool ideas and would like to draw a crowd to look at them" or even just "I have to write just like I have to breathe, but I do hope somebody will pay me to do it." Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe, Big Billy Shakespeare-- these were all guys who were trying to get the bills paid.

This was a revelation to 14-year-old me, who imagined that authors were pursuing some elevated heavens-inspired genius. I think the most important implication of this idea is that it means that writers live/lived in the exact same world as the rest of us.

My teacher used the "trash" label a bit ironically, meaning simply work written out of a need for money or an audience--and that's not a bad thing. The questions may be small, the issues simple (how do I get away from a bloodsucking monster in an old house). What distinguishes good trash is that it is well put together. The characters act like real humans, and the prose is smooth and well-constructed. Stephen King writes good trash. Virtually all classic started out as good trash when they were new.

Bad trash:

The motives are the same, but the material is awful. Characters don't act like recognizable humans, but function as two-dimensional plot engines. The writing itself is awkward and clunky, and often not even very precise or clear. Dan Brown writes bad trash. The Twilight books are bad trash.

Not time nor perspective elevate bad trash. At best they serve as good negative examples.

We can teach from any of these categories, but we do so for different reasons. Classics deal with the big questions and show students new connections to their world. Great works each carry their own reason for being. Good trash is great for growing readers because it is more immediate and relatable. Bad trash-- well, as I said, negative examples.

Oh-- and super important note-- all of this applies equally to fiction and non-fiction.

In the days ahead I'm going to dive further into the why of all this. I would be delighted to read your thoughts and responses in the comments. I'm really hoping to kind of hide for a bit back in the work I always loved while we try to navigate the current craziness.

The Ed Tech Vultures Circle

Some ed tech companies and their investors are busily imagining that the coronaviral hiatus may be their Katrina. Natural disaster plus government botch job equals the board being swept clean, allowing players a golden opportunity to move in and clean up.

I see folks on Twitter wondering where Betsy DeVos is, why the USED isn't offering more guidance to schools as they navigate this mess. Could be because this situation suits her just fine, and public schools being shut down is a dream come true.

But while some folks may view this shutdown as a philosophical opportunity, for some it's all about the investment opportunities. Like Katrina's aftermath, vulture capitalism at its finest.

My email is filing up with pitches from more companies than I've ever heard of, all variations on "Your readers (aka our prospective customers) would love to hear about our cool product that is just the thing for dealing with the current pandemic crisis." While I am sure that some companies sincerely believe they have help they can offer at this time, I am equally sure that those companies are not trying to wring a bunch of client-building PR out of it. I'm seeing these pitches because I'm an education blogger at Forbes.com--if these things are coming to me, then the big-time education journalists must be drowning in the stuff.

Then there's this sort of thing. Take a look at this interview over at Goldman Sachs (Motto: "Honest, we haven't done anything to tank the economy, lately"). We're talking to Adam Nordin, whose beat is listed as the "education technology sector" for the Investment Banking Division; his LinkedIn profile says he's a lawyer/CPA, a Partner and Managing Director in the Technology Group, where his main responsibilities are M&A, IPOs, and leveraged finance. Previously he worked for Barclays (2010-2018) and Credit Suisse (1998-2010), in both cases counting "education technology" in his areas of focus. His degrees are all in accounting and finance.

The interview was run last Tuesday (amazing how we now track things by days rather than weeks or months), and he already smelled money:

COVID-19 could sharply accelerate the adoption of online learning in higher education. Historically, online learning in universities was largely a function of self-selection...This is the first time many universities will have to rely on a fully online experience for their undergraduate population. Doing so could dramatically accelerate the long-term acceptance of online learning. 

In other words, it used to be that only people who wanted to learn online chose to, but now that many people will be forced to, the market should grow.

Nordin, who you will recall has no actual training or experience in education, has his own thoughts about why ed tech adoption has laggeed, and why it is poised for success now. Low bandwidth and "rudimentary data compression" made real-time interactions difficult, but now--

Today, online learning can offer live virtual classrooms—aided by ample bandwidth and advanced cloud-based collaboration technologies— that rival, or even exceed, an in-class experience.

Yep-- taking the class on computer over the internet is actually better than doing it live. Except that, no, not really. Consider this Forbes report from a decade ago, surveying business leaders and finding that pretty much everybody considers live meetings better for things like leadership, engagement, inspiration, decision-making, accountability, candor, plus a variety of other intangibles. Has the tech gotten better since 2009? Sure. That much better? That's a tough case to make.

But Nordin things that AR and VR are going to make collaboration in virtual environments all the rage.

Meanwhile, the sector has seen "strong capital flows" in the last three-to-five years, particularly as "the structural barriers to adoption are falling."

Other drivers? Nordin says that "younger students expect a more digital experience and are increasingly judging their university choices on this factor" which-- is that actually true? Other than wanting a good wi-fi hookup and decent phone reception, are the youngsters really clamoring for digitized classrooms? Nordin also notes that universities are short on money, and ed tech is cheaper than traditional stuff, and that matters because--

It’s not just the Provost that weighs in on the debate of online versus traditional higher education—the CFO and President are now involved. 

In other words, as we get more non-education people to weigh in on these education decisions, it's an ed tech win. And if you think that at some point we're going to worry about how well the online tech actually educates anyone, well, no. It's the same old ed tech baloney that we've seen and heard before:

In short, data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence are enabling both students and teachers to gain a more customized and enriching experience. Learning assessments can detail precisely how, why and on what dimensions a student needs to focus to succeed. Professors hosting live-streaming classes have rich, personalized data that show each student’s entire performance profile, complete with their challenges and focus areas, enabling them to drive an individualized discussion with every student.

Data crunching, and fake artificial intelligence. Doing granular analysis of student learning (as long as you only measure the things that a computer program can measure). Teachers can talk to students because software will tell them things about that student, just in case the teacher lacks the power of seeing, listening, and relating to other carbon based life forms.

There will always be a place for the traditional campus experience, but online learning is here to stay. 

As will pitches that promise things that ed tech can't deliver.

As school closures drag on, there are two schools of thought on the ed tech incursion. The ed tech vultures of Coronavirus Katrina are sure that once pushed into using the products, teachers, parents and students will fall in love and never want to go back. Others suspect that once forced to deal with this stuff, students, teachers and parents will rediscover everything there is to love about traditional live-action 3D education.

Not to say that some of these tools may well turn out to be useful in the weeks ahead. Time will tell. In the meantime, the ed tech vultures are circling, hoping that the current crisis will provide them with a bounteous feast.

Virus and Vouchers

US education has essentially ground to a halt. Districts have announced that no work done distantly will count, largely out of fear that they cannot properly serve IEP students and therefor distance schooling would be illegal (aka "likely to prompt a lawsuit from a special ed family's lawyer). Where distance learning is occuring, the gap between haves and have-nots is being highlighted as it grows. Some districts, staring into the digital divide, have thrown up their hands and said, "We don't have the resources to build a bridge across that." Meanwhile, here's a district that might buy 700 hot spots for its students (cost approx: $200K).

I've been in a couple of conversations now with folks who have said that if the public schools can't educate everyone, they should just give the parents the money (the feds seem to be thinking in a different direction--just bypass IDEA). This is just another way to state the case for vouchers, but it's a framing that makes it clear why I think vouchers, in all their various forms, are a lousy idea.

Because what a voucher says is, "To get out of any obligation to educate your child, we're just going to cut you a check." It says, "You know, educating your child is hard. I'm willing to write you a check in order to get out of doing it."

That's a lousy deal. You can argue that the public education system has failed in too many schools to deliver on the promise of a free, quality education for each student. But I have never believed that the best way to deal with that unmet promise is to just say, "Okay, well, never mind then. We'll just stop trying, and we'll cut you a check to stop complaining about it."

Vouchers are not about empowering parents. Parents give up their right to a full, free, appropriate quality education for their children and in return they get whatever the market is willing to give them for the amount of money they've been handed.

Nor is "vote with your feet" an empowering slogan; it's just another way for the market to say, "You don't like what we're giving you for your money? Fine. There's the door. Have a nice life."

Vouchers are an abdication of the government's responsibility to make good on the progress of an education for every young citizen. The coronavirus hiatus is really highlighting how big the gap between different education constituencies is; writing parents a check to get them to look away is not the answer.

ICYMI: Stay In Place Edition (3/22)

Well, here we all are, in place (except for some of you who think this is a fake and some of you who think nothing should interfere with spring break). Frankly, the reading this week has been a bit....well, repetitive. But here are some things to peruse while you're holding down your couch.

An Open Letter To Seniors

Louisiana's teacher of the year has some thoughts for high school seniors, whose big year is threatening to end with a whimper instead of a bang. Courtesy of the indispensable Mercedes Schneider, who also has some thoughts of her own for seniors facing this derailment.

Welcome To Your Hastily Prepared Online College Course

From McSweeney's. Probably the funniest thing you'll read this week.

AI Is an Ideology, Not a Technology

Intriguing contrary opinion about the artificial intelligence movement, courtesy of Jaron Lanier at Wired. A thoughtful look at the reasons to not be an AI fan.

The Demise of the Great Education Saviors  

Kevin Carey at the Washington Post looks at how choice and charters have lost political clout at this point. Maybe.

Only Ten Black Students  

Meanwhile, in NYC, you may recall a big flap last year over the proportionately tiny number of Black students who made it into Stuyvesant High School, one of the city's elite selective schools. Well, one year later, after carefully considering the issues-- nothing has changed at all. The New York Times has Eliza Shapiro on the story.

They Didn't Have A Chance To Say Goodbye

Yeah, I virtually never see eye to eye with Erika Sanzi, and am not exactly a fan of Education Post. But if you ignore those two things, this piece about the emotional cost for students of the sudden ending of school is on point. In PA we may feel it extra, since the governor shut down schools late Friday afternoon, after many students were already gone.

Coronavirus opens the gap  

This piece from the Philadelphia Enquirer takes a look at how the coronaviral break highlights that some districts can give every student a computer, and other districts, not so much.

Meanwhile, there are a million pieces about how you too can better handle the learning from home thing. I got tired of reading and eye-rolling at them about Tuesday.

So hang in there, stay safe, and order food from your local restaurants that are still trying to stay open, and any other local small business you can support.

AI Is Not Going To Drive Trucks (Or Your Classroom)

From Jalopnik, we get this report from the world of self-driving trucks. Mark it the gazillionth cautionary tale for folks who believe that AI will be able to take over critical human functions any time soon.

The article takes a look at Starsky Robotics, a company that was in the business of producing unmanned semis for public highways. Now it's just in the business of shutting down. The co-founder, Stefan Seitz-Axmacher gave an interview to Automotive News that's behind a paywall but Jalponik shares some of the highlights.

Not as smart as it looks.

Starsky is closing up shop because they cant get backers, and they lost their backers because they insisted on putting an emphasis on safety rather than cool new features

But a problem emerged: that safety focus didn’t excite investors. Venture capitalists, Seltz-Axmacher said, had trouble grasping why the company expended massive resources preparing, validating and vetting his system, then preparing a backup system, before the initial unmanned test run. That work essentially didn’t matter when he went in search of more funding.

“There’s not a lot of Silicon Valley companies that have shipped safety-critical products,” he said. “They measured progress on interesting features.”

Seitz-Axmacher also notes that faith in self-driving vehicles is waning in the venture capitalist world, mostly because they've spent a lot of money and self-driven cars still aren't right around the corner, with a bundle of problems still unsolved. Seitz-Axmacher points at "edge cases," the rare-but-significant events that can happen. In driving, these events are rare but significant, like a deer or small child darting into the road. And "teaching" the AI about these events gets exponentially harder and more expensive as the events are rarer.

This is the flip side of our old issue, standardization. To make a measurement algorithm work, you have to set up a system that excludes all the edge events; one simple way to do that is multiple choice test questions. This is why AI still hasn't a hope in hell of actually assessing writing in any meaningful way-- because a written essay will often include edge elements. In fact, the better essays are better precisely because the writer has included an edge element, a piece of something that falls outside the boundaries of basic expectations.

Self-driving vehicles can't use a standardization solution, can't require all roads and drivers to follow the exact same set of rules, and so they have no choice but to find a way to "teach" the AI how to deal with the messy reality of human behavior on US streets. Well, they do have a choice-- they can just not do it, but that keeps ending up in the death of bystanders.

Seitz-Axmacher goes into detail in a blog post which, again, offers parallels to the world of education. For instance, his painful realization that investors like safety far less than they like cool features. The equivalent in education is the desire to promote cool features, features that will help your product stand out in a crowded marketplace, over whether or not the product actually works, and works all the time.

He gets into other problems with the "AV (autonomous vehicle) space," but I'm particularly struck by this:

The biggest, however, is that supervised machine learning doesn’t live up to the hype. It isn’t actual artificial intelligence akin to C-3PO, it’s a sophisticated pattern-matching tool.

AI isn't really AI. It's just pattern recognition algorithms, which, yes, is exactly the kind of fake AI that ed tech folks keep trying to sell to schools.

But wait-- didn't I read about Amazon having a whole fleet of driverless trucks doing their deliveries? Well, yes and no. Amazon is investing in self-driving vehicles, but its trucks are on the I-10; they are trained to handle one specific chunk of road. They have used the standardization route.

Seitz-Axmacher notes one other thing about his former industry-- it's loaded with bullshit to the point that people expect it. Okay, I'm paraphrasing a bit. But he sadly notes that presenting real, modest ac achievements in a sector filled with people trumpeting dramatic features, including plenty that they can't actually deliver, is hard. That tracks. If there's one thing that the ed tech industry does consistently, it's over-promise and under-deliver.

This kind of story is important to file away some place handy for one other reason-- because sooner or later somebody, maybe your brother-in-law or a thinky tank guy or a secretary of education, is going to say, "Gee, AI is revolutionizing all these other sectors, why not education?" The answer, in part, is that AI isn't doing nearly as much revolutionizing of anything as you keep hearing it is. Always--always--examine the claims. Real life is complex and messy and filled with "edge" events; it still takes a human to navigate.